Small form factor (SFF) media are rapidly gaining popularity for use in connection with various consumer devices. For example, consumer devices, such as personal computers (PCs), handheld computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs) etc., often integrate removable (or pluggable) media products, including Compact Flash, ATA Flash, Memory Stick (e.g., from Sony), Secure Digital (SD), and Multimedia Card (MMC). Such media devices are useful tools for downloading music files from a PC to a portable audio player, or transferring pictures from a digital camera to the PC. In addition to media products, various SFF devices have been (and continually are being) developed for communications applications (wired and wireless), pointing devices, as well as other applications intended to augment functionality of a computing device.
As SFF devices and media increase in popularity, vendors and manufacturers of such products continually look for opportunities to extend the use of the integrated removable memory slot and interface logic in devices from strictly storage to general purpose I/O, and to integrate slots for these devices into mobile PCs. Extending the use of these components, for example, would create an accessory market for SFF devices and media form factors in accessories, such as modems, network adapter cards, Bluetooth transceivers, and fingerprint readers, to name a few examples.
One way to utilize SFF devices is to provide a new bus driver to directly support each respective type of the SFF device. While, at first, such an approach may seem like a reasonable way to achieve native operating system support for small form factor devices, this approach has its drawbacks.
For example, a new bus would require definition of at least one new industry standard bus specification in order for the operating system and hardware manufacturers to ensure a good end user experience. Creating such a standard is a complex and time-consuming process because of the number of interested companies and the diversity of devices seeking similar support. If a new bus exists, then a new bus driver would be required to support the new bus standard. Writing a bus driver also can be a time-consuming and expensive task because of the complexity of a bus driver. For example, the creation of a new bus driver typically includes has a long design and implementation phases and requires even longer testing phases. Another problem with creating a new device driver is that devices requiring a new bus driver will generally not be backwards compatible with earlier operating systems. As a result, new bus specifications would have to be maintained and perpetuated in future operating system releases in parallel with currently maintained specifications, in spite of the overlap between the technologies.
By way of example, if a user inserts a SFF device into a corresponding slot of a computer (or other microprocessor based device) that does not leverage an existing bus in the operating system, the device will not work absent supplemental support from the device vendor. Such supplemental support, for example, includes the vendor providing an appropriate bus driver for the new bus and a device driver for the SFF device. Thus, to provide a positive experience for the end user, the vendor must ensure that the end user has access to the required bus driver and the device driver, such as through installation media (e.g., a disk) or a vendor Web site.